by Rex Hurst
“Can you?” Michael faltered.
“Oh, yes. That is what Calach does. Tee hee hee. Who to be hexed?”
They looked at each other. Jon nodded to the Game Master. His mind was almost completely gone from the image now. It was all too real.
“Vincent Gabbaducci.”
“And who is to be charmed?”
“Maria Maleventum. She is to fall in love with a person named Jon St. Fond.”
Sweat dripped from Jon’s forehead. Passions stirred and the red haze of desire rode over his brain. Could this really work? The girl he wanted so much, the focus of his primal lust, would soon be his. And so easily? He became so excited he made himself sick.
“Jon St. Fond,” said the entity. Sneering curiosity. A treasure uncovered. Jon’s blood froze. His name was now known. “Is that you?”
“Calach doesn’t know things. Calach does things. And he will do this,” stated the Game Master.
“Oh, and he will. Once he’s been paid.”
“Paid with what?” Jon blurted.
“Don’t you know, mage? If you are what you claim. Calach needs something of the target of the hex. Something he’s touched. So Calach can focus. Hair from those to be charmed. Where it’s ripped from doesn’t matter.”
Jon wondered about how necessary it was. Perhaps the creature needed a DNA signature to home in on. Some psychic radar guidance system. Or was it just a shit test to see if those conjuring the creature were serious.
“And blood.” Calach finished.
“Blood?”
“Fresh blood, straight from the victim’s veins.”
“Uh.”
“Human. Animal. Matters not to Calach. Complete the rites. Spill the blood and it is yours.”
“We’ll give you your blood and hair, but don’t waste my time on rites and that crap.”
“Oh, you do know something, Game Master. Much more than your elf mage flunky.”
Michael turned the game over, severing the connection. The vision, barely a foggy image in Jon’s mind, erased completely. The dread ebbed slowly from his bowels. Contact broken. They were alone.
Michael leapt over the scattered game pieces and hugged Jon. Lingering sexual excitement charged through him. Jon could read him like a book. He was proven right. He could make deals. A glint of hunger for power sparkled in the eyes. This was just the beginning to him. Murky plans formulated in his brain. Right now, the achievement was enough. And for Jon, perhaps more in the days to come. That is the only reason he didn’t walk away immediately when Michael asked,
“Where are we going to get the blood?”
“If we do.”
“What do you mean? You can’t back out now. This—”
“I can if I want to.”
Give me a big enough lever, Archimedes wrote. The modern world was built on leverage. It’s just how you got things done.
“Why would you?” Michael asked, his voice was soaked in whiny pleading that made Jon want to slap him.
“Because you haven’t held up your end of the bargain. Take me to Snakeland.”
***
Another day had to stretch by in slow motion before the journey to Snakeland could happen. His mother and little sister had returned, basking in the glory of a second-place trophy. From a little devious eavesdropping, he discovered that Catherine wasn’t expected to place, but it seemed two of the other contestants had gotten sick from food poisoning. Mother and Father both laughed heartily at that.
“Whatever it takes to get ahead,” Father declared, patting the grinning youngster who hugged his leg and slipping her a hundred dollar bill.
Later she taunted Jon with it, waving it at him and jeering. “Father loves me. He hates you. He told me so.”
All he could do was slam the door in her face. She spent a few more minutes yelling muffled insults through the wood, then left. The problem was Jon couldn’t really disagree with her.
At school, he saw Kathy, still bleary eyed from lack of sleep. Her clothes were dirty and wrinkled. Hair matted and face unwashed, she tottered about like the walking dead. He tried to say hi, but she just brushed past him, entranced.
Louis still hadn’t returned by that Monday. A worrying prospect. Was he still wandering out in the woods? People tend to think of New York as one huge asphalt jungle, nothing but high rises and slums, but there’s a lot of forests between the urban centers. It was quite possible to wander for days without seeing civilization. Jon and Michael debated whether to call at Louis’s house on the way to Snakeland. Jon felt it their obligation.
“He wouldn’t be out there if not for us and we just left him.”
Michael disagreed.
“As far as he knew, he ran off and left us to die. Besides, if he was missing wouldn’t his parents be calling us? They seem to be a pretty tightknit family.”
Fair enough point. Jon gave in.
It’s odd to picture that a significant amount of foliage, nearly enough to be classified as a small woods, could exist in the middle of city, but it did. This wasn’t the result of urban planning, but rather nature reclaiming the land.
When the steel plants died, so did the transportation industry attached to them. Long stretches of land that once held railroad tracks on top of artificial hills had been abandoned, leaving plenty of land for rogue vegetation to creep in and spread.
Under the ruins of a dismantled trestle bridge, in an area of twisted plants and rusted out vehicles, they met. Snakeland, the witch’s burrow, was a circular area where three fires burned in old fifty gallon drums. The grass had been worn away through constant foot traffic, leaving only the bare brown earth glaring out. Figures in odd clothes danced by the fires.
Why did they meet there?
“Last woman in America was hanged for witchcraft right on this spot,” some patchouli stain of a man stuttered at them. “Goody Smith.”
“Well, goody for her. Hell of a way to become one of history’s footnotes,” Michael sneered.
Jon nudged him and whispered for him to be cool. Overnight Michael had become arrogant and condescending. Contact with the beyond and a half done deal with the devil had put unwarranted lead in his pencil.
The people gathered in Snakeland had been strangely welcoming. At first, Jon assumed that was due to Michael being a familiar face, but many introduced themselves to both the boys. Michael didn’t seem to be as much a regular as he had let on.
“Lot of new bodies here,” Michael whispered. “Lots of poseurs.”
Jon could see that. Though friendly, each person always made sure to throw whatever occult bullshit they touted at the pair: Crystals, charms, and kindergarten interpretations of complex philosophical trains of thought. Buddhism, devil worship, Taoism, Wicca, generic paganism, UFO cults, all were mixed together in this group. Each discourse was dispensed in-between puffs off a bong or slurps of beer. All of it was cribbed from other sources with no variation or originality.
Each person present was just looking for an audience to show off how “different” they were. Whenever another person spoke, the poseurs’ eyes trailed off and their minds sprinted ahead to the next talking point where they could butt in and demonstrate their plagiarized “wisdom.” Many of their personal egos rested on being the person of great knowledge, even though their learning only extended to a couple of half-read paperbacks.
There was no rhyme or reason. A completely mixed bag of beliefs, like a gang for Unitarian misfits. If you stripped away the jumbled religious crapola, it was just a party for the pretentious.
There were some nice people wearing wizard hats, glitter makeup, black fingernails, mohawks, ripped jeans, heavy metal T-shirts. Cheap beer, pot, acid, whippets were communally passed about. A few slipped behind car wrecks to indulge in harder substances. Some teens with safety pins in their heads futilely spray painted pentacles over the dirt.
A scrawny reed snuck up behind Jon and snaked a wilted arm in front of his face.
Jon started.
�
�How doin’,” the face attached to the hand said. “I’m Brian Elder.”
A withered man, fitting his name, somewhere between seventy and eighty, though still spry. He was nearly hairless, with a close-cropped crown of white that blended seamlessly into his alabaster skin. The rest, eyebrows, nose, ears, cheeks, and chin, were scraped as clean as they could be. So white was he that it was nearly impossible to tell where his teeth began and gums ended. He might’ve been mistaken for an albino if not for his deep black eyes.
Deep was as good a term as Jon could’ve thought up, for the orbs seemed to dwell on and on, like an echo through a dark hallway. They reflected obscure secrets and cryptic answers to which even the questions had been forgotten. Something sinister was in the brain connected to those eyes, something strange and alien.
“Come on. Come on,” the ancient said and hustled a little ways away from the others.
The trio sat in the dirt, the light from one of the barrel fires played across Elder’s face. Unlike most men his age, he had no problem squatting. He moved like a man of twenty. He pulled from his pocket an open bag of gummy worms and extended it to the others. When those were refused, he sparked a joint and offered that. Again, both boys declined.
“I hope you’re not going to have a cigarette,” he said to them. “I despise tobacco. Smoking it is a perverted habit for degenerates.” He raised the bud. “This is all I need.”
The thick white smoke that poured from Elder’s nostrils and lips had a thin line of red running through it, like a peppermint vapor. Both the boys coughed heavily as the smoke tried to climb up their noses. There was something else mixed with the marijuana. Jon had smelt pot enough times, mostly when it emerged from his sister’s room during her sexual romps, and this was an entirely different stench.
“Do you know why we all gather here?” he asked.
“Yeah, Goody Smith.”
“And you know her story? In detail?”
They had to admit no. Without prompting, the old man went into a well-practiced spiel.
“The first wave of pioneers did a good job. Most had thrown off the shackles of a life where their fate was predetermined—poverty, back breaking work, early death. In the old world, the class system was the immutable law of God. No wonder Calvinism was so popular. But here was an unspoilt world, where not every piece of land had been snatched up by some noble prick. They hewed out a decent life and made what they could.
“It’s the second wave that brought civilization and all its leftover evils dragging behind like an uncut afterbirth. They arrived running from tyranny, only to become tyrants themselves. Nearly a century before the revolution, when the hamlet of Black Rock grew to a township, came the near destitute Goody Glover and her daughter. She told a weeping tale of being deported with her husband and child from her native Ireland by Cromwell’s invading forces and how they were sold into slavery on a sugar plantation in Barbados. There, her spouse was executed for not renouncing his Roman Catholic faith.
“Goody escaped the slavers and made her way here, to the good Protestant land of plenty. She became housekeeper to a rising family in the textile trade. Rumors say she drank. Others that she whored. Whether or not it was true, what has been universally accepted was that she had a gorgeous singing voice. One that, due to the strict religious laws, she was not permitted to use. So, she did so only at night. They say visions danced in the moonlight when her golden voice graced the night. Men would sneak around the corners of their house to listen in, and the air would grow light like a fairy story.
“Though she did not flaunt it, her Catholic ways raised eyebrows. Despite vicious rumors by other women to the contrary, she spurned all suitors. This led to much grumbling, much talk of her haughty ways. In all things she lived as a decent woman should.
“The fateful moment came after the young daughter had been accused of stealing a pair of stockings by the mistress of the house. A terrible fight ensued and, later that night, the mistress and her three daughters became violently ill and started to act strangely. They talked to the air and inanimate objects but refused to discourse with actual people. They couldn’t walk normally and instead had to stride about as if a hoop was between their legs, or else they would fall over.
“The local doctor, if you could call him that, examined them and proclaimed they had been bewitched. Suspicion fell on Goody and her papist ways. Several small dolls were seized from her room. The kind used to curse, her accusers claimed. In reality, they were just representations of saints.
“Goody was seized and thrown in the local jail. There she stopped being able to speak English, though she understood it, and could only communicate in her native Irish tongue, which at first was misunderstood as a demonic language.
“At the trial, all sorts of things were brought up, her ‘stubborn idolatry’, the weird effects of the women, though modern physicians might recognize them all as brain damage caused by ergot poisoning from spoiled wheat, c’est la vie, and her inability to recite the Lord’s prayer from memory—a sure sign of Satan. A few others claimed they had dreams of her riding broomsticks. Two men, former suitors, came forward and claimed that she had stolen their penises after being pulled into passivity by her golden singing voice. They had to ransom their cocks back by performing blasphemous rites in the church. They testified she kept the genitals all writhing around in a bird’s nest like giant maggots.
“With that sort of damning evidence, the judges were quick to order her death. On that fateful day, November 16th, 1688, she was taken to this spot and hanged until dead. The mocking shouts of Black Rock townspeople ushered her into Hell.
“In her last words, she stated that executing her would not heal the children. This was taken to mean that either she was innocent and someone else had cursed the family or that the damage was done and couldn’t be undone.”
Jon stopped him there. Elder had become more and more agitated and was tearing up clumps of turf and whipping them around. The joint smoke was completely red at this point. All the poseurs gave him a wide berth, fearfully glancing over shoulders at the three of them. They pointed at Elder and whispered warnings.
“But she was innocent,” Jon said.
“Course she fucking was,” the near albino laughed. He licked his gums in an obscene manner. “But the family was cursed and whoever did it got away scot free. In these cases the innocents are always hurt. In all the witch trials in America only one ever got the right person, Bridget Bishop.”
“You’re very sure.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “It was mostly about hurting the husband of the family. He was a real prick, poking his nose in everyone’s business.” Black eyes sparkled. The grin dropped to a leer. “He had to go. Had to be distracted.”
Elder stubbed out the dead joint, then settled in cross-legged, dragging in his feet so deep that they disappeared. His demeanor changed, his face twisted up into disgust.
“Now what do you want?”
“I want to know why you’re helping Michael.”
“Because of all the dead presidents shoved in my face.”
“Just for the money?”
“I like money. I require a lot of it.”
Rumpled T-shirt sporting a logo for a band that broke up a decade ago, jeans so faded the knees were nothing but threads, scuffed shoes that had been re-soled at least once, with a broken shoestring tied back together. No cash spent for clothes, and really, how much could he have wriggled out of Michael?
Jon turned to Michael for confirmation, but his friend was in his own world. Sitting upright, he stared at the strange man as if Elder was the ultimate riddle, a lock with no key, a missing link in a forgotten chain. His lips kept muttering something inaudible, just below the range of human hearing. Sweat clustered at his temples. No help there.
“Tell me about the game, Dark Dungeons.”
“Back in the old days, I ran with a pretty wild crowd. Satanists and occultists, as you like, they mixed and matched that shit up for whatev
er hit their funny bone. Often they’d just shoot up cocaine, drink their gin rickeys, and summon up a spirit as a party favor. Then one of them wondered why the rituals worked only some of the time, why there were so many different rituals, and why the same spirit could be yanked to the world on different dimes as it were.”
“Because it’s the people not the rite,” Jon interrupted. “We’re past this.”
“Don’t step on my story, prick,” yelled the old man.
A “whoa” came from behind his back. Jon tilted his head and saw everyone, all the poseurs, had backed up to the other end of Snakeland. They stared at the ground, at the sky, to the east, west, south, anywhere but them.
“Yeah,” Elder continued. “Some became more attuned to making contact than others, and some places were better than others. Right, Jon?”
Those eyes took him in and Jon could only nod.
“There are soft spots in the world, where the beyond is just one step away. The universe is still young, still a growing boy, hasn’t reached its full maturity. And, like a baby’s skull, some parts are more malleable than others.”
Yes. That made sense, he guessed. Not in a scientific way, but if you ignored physics, it might be real. Jon found that he was suddenly dehydrated.
“The game,” he croaked.
“What an ornery cuss. Fine, the game,” he sparked another smoke, the same peppermint curl flowed from it. “Certain parties weren’t satisfied with the will-they won’t-they outcome of these rites and tried to come up with a way to standardize it. Dark Dungeons. An elegant and versatile system, which can be altered to fit the needs of the players, yet structured enough to force all minds down the same rabbit hole.”
“And it even works when the people playing have no idea what it’s all about,” said Jon.
“It works better that way sometimes, especially when the world is soft. You know that, Jon. You can sense it. Your guts twist up whenever you’re near a spot. It’s your special gift. The only thing interesting about you.”
Elder’s flat lips twisted up. He seemed to be tasting the air. Nostrils flared, little white hairs shook inside of them. And those eyes! They deepened, went further into the unknown.
